I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate

A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

Regarding scientific transparency, a defining characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific data, theories and procedures so that independent parties, and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis, can replicate and validate asserted experiments or observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence of destroying information and data that the public would naturally assume would be available according to freedom of information principles. “Mike, can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?” Jones wrote to Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email released in Climategate 1.0. “Keith will do likewise. … We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!”

The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

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James, when you write that this new batch of emails “adds weight” to climategate 1.0, you neglect to mention that three independent panels investigated climategate 1. They found no evidence of wrongdoing by the scientists involved. I’m not sure how one adds weight to something that proved weightless.

Climategate 1.0 proved to be nothing more than a smattering of emails taken out of context. Your scattered selection of emails here appears to be no different.

This is just a simple round of FOIA email releases. There are several more to come in their drip, drip, drip strategy. They have close to 150,000 emails by my understanding. If I were you, I would transition from the denial stage of grief and move on to the next, because your religion is toast. It cannot survive this.

Another brick in the wall of Climate science stupidity. Guys, the world’s financial system is falling apart. All that green technology in Europe is starting to rust under the weight of all that snow and rain. Governments don’t have the money to waste on such idiocy anymore.

“All that green technology in Europe is starting to rust under the weight of all that snow and rain.”

So Gary Marshall has returned for another bout of trolling. Everyone should prepare for more of the same–fabrications, idiocy, scientific illiteracy, innumeracy, non sequiturs, logical fallacies, and that special touch of insanity that is unique to Gary Marshall.

It’s true that Gary Marshall’s trolling tool belt is fairly limited, but for good reason he’s not allowed near anything sharp for fear he’ll injure himself. Therefore his main trolling technique is to try to disrupt the conversation by making truly stupid comments and insisting that scientists, government agencies, and recognized experts are wrong. Yes, that’s right, he’s a dullard.

@cyruspinkerton “I love the science denial PR spin in referring to the email hacking (still under investigation by law enforcement, by the way) as “FOIA.””

The group that released the email is called FOIA. That’s their NAME. Obviously they chose it in reference to the Freedom of Information Act, but that doesn’t make you any less ignorant or your mockery any more justified. Scumbag.

“The group that released the email is called FOIA. That’s their NAME.”

Indeed it is–I never suggested otherwise. However, as we both know, the emails they have posted were NOT obtained via the FOIA; rather, they were hacked (which is a crime, by the way). Therefore, the “FOIA” name represents a complete misrepresentation of the group’s methods (i.e., fraud)–they did not obtain the emails using legal methods as their name suggests.

Now, I suppose if John Wayne Gacy called himself “The World’s Bestest Babysitter,” you’d gladly refer to him by that name because you have no reservations about helping fraudsters. And I imagine you happily refer to the 9-11 terrorists as “martyrs” because that’s how they referred to themselves. However, I don’t tolerate fraud, nor do I tolerate intellectual dishonesty in others, so I make a point of mocking people like you and Wendy who either don’t have the critical capacity to recognize fraud or don’t have the integrity to call out those who aim to mislead.

Therefore, given the facts, my mockery is entirely justified. Thank you for lending your support to the cretins who aid fraudsters by propagating their misrepresentations.

These people wrote their emails on my dime. I paid their salaries. I paid for their facilities. Ergo I own their emails and the only crime that has been committed here is by those who secreted their little conspiracies from those who employed them.

When I write emails on my employers time using his facilities they belong to him – not me.

The emails I write on my time using my facilities are mine. Do you get the difference?

“Ergo I own their emails and the only crime that has been committed here is by those who secreted their little conspiracies from those who employed them.”

More idiocy. Apparently you are unaware that there is a police inquiry, led by Norfolk Constabulary, to identify the hackers. You see, those who hacked the emails committed a crime, and even though you are happy to forgive this crime, it is still a crime.

Denying that a crime was committed by hackers simply makes you look like a dolt.